Chapter 10: Conclusions (a)

“Learning with understanding is more likely to promote transfer than simply memorizing information from a text or a lecture (236).”

This factor (I quoted above) of “people’s ability to transfer what they have learned” reminded me of my Composition II class. In addition to assisting them with how to write a research paper, I give them 15-20 words a week to practice them for the verbal portion of the SATs when they take it next school year. Rather than stressing the importance of memorizing the definitions, I ask them to write a sentence for each word. I have each student write a sentence on the board and I review each sentence for clarity with the entire class. In this regard, I am able to tap on subject-verb agreements, identifying parts of speech, comprehension, and applying the vocabulary words to current life situations.